Gattopardi and Cheap Labor

Reflections from Italy on the wicked problem of unregulated and unregulatable immigration into Western Europe.

I could never understand what animal exactly the gattopardo was supposed to be. A leopard? A cheetah? A mythical beast? For sure, none of those roams my country. But I, like most Italians, always understood the meaning of the adjective gattopardesco. It refers to someone who is pretending to change but deep down remains the same as before, and does so out of opportunism in order to maintain a position of power and privilege in a world that is entering a new phase.

For those wondering whatever big cat can be associated to this kind of very specific behaviour, the answer is: none. The term actually comes from Il Gattopardo, the famous novel by Sicilian writer Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa (note that a lowercase di in an Italian surname usually indicates nobility, while the uppercase Di does not), later adapted into a star-studded movie by another aristocrat, Luchino Visconti. The titular character, prince Fabrizio Salina, is a member of the Sicilian landed aristocracy; like the author’s, his family’s coat of arms features a crowned gattopardo, which also works in the story as a metaphor for power and fierceness.

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